Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014â2015) was a work of endurance performance art by Emma Sulkowicz, conducted as her senior thesis during the final year of her visual arts degree at Columbia University in New York. Begun in September 2014, the piece involved Sulkowicz carrying a 50-lb mattress â of the kind Columbia uses in its dorms â wherever she went on campus. She said the piece would end when a student she alleges raped her in her dorm room in 2012 was expelled from or otherwise left the university. Sulkowicz carried the mattress until May 2015 when both students graduated. Several women helped her carry it to the graduation ceremony.
